Windfall

I was out late last night.  Drinking and eating.  This morning I am sleeping in.  It's past 9:30, and I get a text.  A text?  Who would that be but Jayne?  I sit up, grab the phone, and check.  Yup.  "Woohoo!!  Payday!!"  Well.  That sounds good.  And some earlier texts about a tower.  Something must be up in wspace. 

I move across the hall into my office, and log in.  Strangely, Jayne is not on.  Nobody is.  I get a message: "Emptied out a SMA and corp hangar, check C4b.  There is a Claymore there I can't fly".  I can't fly it either.  I am already in my Manticore, so off I go to our static wormhole.  I cross, and dscan, and immediately see the situation: a tower but no force field, a Claymore, and an SMA wreck.  Jayne has come and gone leaving little of value.

There is a "tower perch" bookmark, so I warp there.  The tower is half-caged with bubbles, but they are owned by the same corp.  Evidently the bubbles are there to make hunters work a little harder.  From the perch I warp to a jetcan near the tower.  There are two jetcans that might have loot, and also two large anchorable containers.  The jetcans have cap boosters in them, not really worth worrying about.  One of the anchorables is their bookmarks transfer point, but the other might have something.  I start shooting it with torps.  After a restock, I kill it.  Nothing at all -- no killmail, no drop.  Oh well.  (Do anchorable cans drop loot?  I don't know.)

The Claymore is just sitting there empty.  I wants it, precious!  I email a corp member to see if he can fly them.  Then I do other stuff for a while.  Breakfast.  Market ops on my Jita alt.  And I get on coms with Jayne, learning the backstory.  Which I had him write up:

It is just after downtime, and I have a little time to play EVE.  We are still supplying our new hole and want to get some more goods in.  Our system is completely closed off at this point, so I scan down and fly to our C4 static.  Upon entering the system, I look up the ID and see the system has a C3 static: good news for our exit plans!   

I start scanning the system, which looks like it will take me a while (20 sigs) and I run a d-scan.  I see a crane and a tower, I keep scanning.  I find the C3 and bookmark it.  Just at this point it occurs to me that I didn't see a force field.  I d-scan again, sure enough, Crane and a tower, but no force field!   

I log in my alt who can fly a crane and get her moving.  I scan down the tower and fly to it, only to land in a bubble. I fly my alt in and slow boat through the bubbles (55km) to the crane.  While on the way it dawns on me that there is a Ship Maintenance Array and a Corporate Hangar Array sitting there.  Score!   

I text a few guys to let them know if they are available to log on.  I immediately fly back out to grab a bomber.  I get the bomber back just about the time I enter the Crane with my alt.  I (stupidly) fly the Crane back while I start in on the Ship Maintenance Array.  I expect to have to shoot it for a while, but it only takes me 30 seconds or so.  I open up the contents to find a number of ships including a Claymore and Tengu.  Then BOOM there goes the corp hangar; it drops 7 cargo containers.   

I now need to do a lot of hauling and I can't very well slow-boat through bubbles, so I fly my bomber to 155km in a direction free of bubbles and make a perch.  I log in a different alt to get an Orca, and between 2 haulers get all of the goods and ships out, except the Claymore which none of my characters can fly.  I also didn't bother to grab the 100,000m3 of cap boosters, which total about 5M isk.  All told I grabbed about 2B worth of goods and ships, including a nice new PvP Tengu to fly. 

After an hour, no answer to my email, and I know nobody else can fly Claymores.  Oh well -- time to blow it up.  I come back and quickly kill it.  Then I loot it -- about 10m in T2 parts.  Oh well.

I reship at home, and start scanning out.  There are a lot of sigs, but in the first five I find a C2 connection to C4b.  A C2 connection to C4 typically means means a C2 with dual statics, one C4 and one highsec.  I scan down a few more sigs but the highsec connection is more important.  So I enter C2a.  Then I spend time scanning down five sigs in C2a, so that we might be able to use it later on for supplies.  One of them is the expected highsec.

Nice salvage

When I come back into C4b, I dscan  and there is the wreck on scan.  I realize a T2 large wreck could be worth a fair amount.  So I go home and get a light salvager.  I come back, and warp to the perch and then the wreck.  Something is different -- ah.  The tower is onlining.  In fact I have 2 minutes.  I guess the owners got word and finally came back to fuel it.  But nobody is here now.  I salvage quickly and, relieved, GTFO.  Nice loot.

I go home and get my bomber, and return.  I return to a force field with a Covert Ops within, onlining stuff.  (They'll have to spend two hours at least re-onlining all their modules.)  I see a Crane log in, and warp.  I guess it went to C2a and warp there, but I was wrong or it got through quickly.  It's not on scan any more; I return to the reaved POS.  Then an Orca logs and just sits there.  After a while I head to our home system to AFK for a while.  (I would do it at the POS, but the Orca suggests they may try to close their system.) 

Later, I return.  Only a handful of POS modules are online, and nobody is there.  This is one of those "I hate EVE" quits, I think.  They'll be back, but only after they've had the time to kick themselves for a while.  As Jayne writes: "Lesson to you guys...don't let your fuel run out!".  Yup.